With the month of June the full heat of summer descended on London. The dusty streets, now almost empty, baked in the glare of sunlight, and the air was parched and quivering; in Great Portland Street the few trees supplied only the scantiest shade.
The interior of Arthur Lovel’s sombre house had become metamorphosed by the clear, searching light which penetrated into corners and recesses; the shadows of winter, which had seemed so native to these large dark rooms, were dispelled; the house, indeed, seemed to have a rather uncomfortable air, as if light and sunshine had really no business in it. Even the schoolroom had taken on a new aspect: the furniture of walnut and old oak had lost its grim and surly character, and a certain black leather armchair, on which Richard was now obliged to kneel, his buttocks bared to receive the cane or ruler, had almost an air of dulness and respectability.
The boy had just passed his fifteenth birthday. During the winter he had grown taller and gained some weight; but it was noticeable that the effeminacy of his appearance had increased also. Moreover, if his figure was still slim, his thighs and loins had taken on a further breadth, an amplitude which was emphasised by the close fit of the Eton jaket and trousers he still wore; on the other hand, his member, whose erections were now still more apparent beneath the tightly stretched serge of the latter, had retained all its puerile proportions and almost childish grace.
Since Harriet Marwood had definitively adopted the method of corporal punishment to bring him to her idea of perfection, – the end to which she was passionately devoted-scarcely a day had gone by without her having had recourse to the whip. His education in the article of discipline had indeed progressed remarkably; by now, like any other English boy under the authority of a governess, he had learned to resign all judgment to his instructress; he had acquired the habit of instant obedience; and he had learned to submit to the most vigorous flogging without question.
Nor was this all. At least one evening every fortnight, strapped to his bed, he endured the protracted torment of a double correction with strap and cane. These important occasions were however no longer announced to him beforehand by the sagacious young woman: so that for three or four nights a week the boy could not be sure whether her nightly visit portended the rapture of an evening kiss or the ordeal of a special punishment–an uncertainty which was only resolved at the last moment by her appearing either fully clothed and with an affectionate smile on her lips, or in her long hooded cape, bare-armed and with the terrible strap in her hand. Thus his anticipations and even his emotions of pleasure and pain were confounded in a single framework of exquisite tension.
By such treatment he had been brought to an extra-ordinary height of sensitivity, –and also of sensuality. Living in a state of constant nervous trepidation, at the mercy of all the whims of his instructress, he had come to entertain a highly ambiguous attitude towards her. He feared her and he loved her; but his love was as yet almost entirely sensual. Her hold on him was through the flesh; and it was maintained and increased by the bestowal of the exact contrary of caresses. The latter he dispensed to himself, with her stern and charming image before his mind, and was happy in the vicarious enjoyment of her which he obtained.
As for Harriet herself, her temperament seemed to find full satisfaction in the imposition of such a regime. Why or how we do not know. To bring a beaten and degraded look into a boy’s face, to rend self-respect out of him in fear, is an occupation not especially relished by the ordinary woman, nor is the deliberate process of associating punishment and pleasure in such a boy’s mind. But Harrier Marwood was not an ordinary woman: her sensuality was of an antique kind, and found its proper element in a curious combination of maternal protectiveness and coldblooded cruelty. Now, infatuated with her pupil’s face and figure, she was happy in her absolute mastery of him.
But perhaps happier than either governess and pupil were Arthur Lovel and his mistress. For him, with his mistress available at every hour of the day or night, life had become an almost ceaseless round of sensual indulgence, his reawakened interest in the charms of her vulva now constituting only an added variety of enjoyment. Thus with his ejaculations shared between her womb, her rectum and her mouth, fornicating, sodomising and being sucked, and for variety enjoying the cunning manipulations of her hands, feet and breasts, the worthy man of business exploited to the full his gargantuan capacity for orgasm, literally wallowing in his own and his mistress’ sperm. Indeed, he could never have enough of Kate, nor she of him; even their occasional fits of utter exhaustion were at once dispelled by the invigorating sounds of flagellation which reached them every day from the schoolroom and every night from Richard’s and Harriet’s sleeping quarters. The house in Great Portland Street had become in fact an abode of unbridled sensuality no less intense from its very discreetness and formality, its characteristically English qualities of method and reserve.
Harriet, well aware of this, was nonetheless concerned with its possible effect on her own plans. She was especially troubled lest Richard’s own sensuality be diverted from herself and become corrupted by the example of a more equal sexual relationship furnished by Kate and his father. I must get the boy away from all this, she thought: I must have him to myself.
Her opportunity came one afternoon when Mr. Lovel inquired as to the progress of his son’s cure.
“Why, sir,” she said thoughtfully, “I have been able to hold him in check. But the habit of self-gratification is very deeply rooted, and calls for the most severe measures. I have been obliged to thrash him almost constantly.”
“Yes, yes, indeed,” said Mr. Lovel, his eye gleaming for an instant, “and I’ve no doubt it’s doing him a world of good. You must not spare him, Miss Marwood.”
“No, sir, I shall not. And I shall cure him, you may rest assured. You can see for yourself the improvement in his appearance.” She paused, and a slight frown appeared on her forehead as she went on. “But it is now midsummer, sir. Living in town, in this heat, is not good for a boy of Richard’s age and delicate constitution. We ought really to go to the country for a month or two. Did you not tell me, sir, that you had a property somewhere in the country?”
“In Hampshire? Of course!” exclaimed Mr. Lovel. “In fact, why don’t you go down to Christchurch with Richard? That will do him a world of good! Exactly, Christchurch. An excellent idea.”
Harriet cloaked a smile of triumph. When she broke the news to Richard he too seemed deeply moved.
“We will go to Christchurch together,” she said. “Down there I shall have you under my authority even more completely than here. I will make you a well-behaved boy indeed, Richard!” She looked at him affectionately. “Well, are you glad to be going to the country with me? To live there with me, just the two of us alone?”
“Yes! Oh yes, miss ...”
She took him in her arms and kissed him with such warmth that his head reeled. And for her part, as she clasped his yielding loins to her and felt the timid pressure of his member against her thighs, she was deliciously aware of her own genitals being bathed in the voluptuous moisture of anticipation.